You already know that Facebook is a great place to share news and photos and to connect with old friends. But did you know that Facebook can also be a great place to connect with your ancestors—or at least to find the answers you need to connect your ancestors to your family tree? With FamilySearch’s Facebook groups, you can interact with other people tracing their families who lived in the same areas as your family and perhaps even break through your brick wall or help others break through theirs. Full Story

by Miryelle Resek For many of us, the thrill of researching our ancestors comes from learning about their stories. Glimpses of what their everyday life looked like, the challenges they overcame, and the hopes and dreams they worked toward add color to otherwise black and white memories.

They say a photo is worth a thousand words—and this principle certainly holds true for family history research. Documents can give you specific dates and details about your ancestors, but a photo—of the events your ancestors experienced, the places they lived, or perhaps even the actual people—can provide insights impossible to glean from words alone.
But how do you find these invaluable photos? A growing number are now online, just a click away if you know where to look for them. Here are a few places to start. Full Story

by Legacy Tree Genealogists (@legacytree) From its beginnings in the early 2000s, genetic genealogy has come a long way. And the innovation in this burgeoning field is expanding at an ever-faster rate. Formerly, DNA testing was mostly used to answer targeted research questions, and the number of individuals participating was relatively small. However, this week, […]

by Amy Johnson Crow No two genealogy websites are exactly alike. FamilySearch.org doesn’t look like Ancestry.com, which doesn’t look like findmypast.com or MyHeritage.com. None of them look like the website of your favorite library or genealogy society. It can feel a little overwhelming to learn the ins and outs of each website. However, we can […]

The Family History Library’s research specialists invite you to a free weeklong United States seminar. The seminar, which will be held on August 22–26, 2016, is perfect for beginning and intermediate genealogists interested in learning about U.S. regions and records, FamilySearch resources, and Family History Library collections. Full Story

If you don’t have a strategy to follow, analyzing old family photographs can be a long, tedious, and sometimes frustrating process. However, with a little information and close examination, family photographs can lead to discovering new information about your ancestors. In her presentation at RootsTech 2016, photo historian Maureen Taylor shared five important steps that will help you take a photo from unknown to part of your family story: Full Story

Each month, FamilySearch publishes a list of new changes and updates to the FamilySearch.org website. This list includes changes to Family Tree as well as other parts of FamilySearch.org. In some cases, these changes will also be published as individual articles where the need to do so exists. Full Story